Evening On The Ground
by Milk and Glass
Summary: Meredith/Addison femslash. Takes place during "Time Has Come Today". Addison confronts Meredith in an on-call room after the black panties incident. Leads to rough sex, a bit of h/c, and understanding. One-shot.


Like any major event, it starts and ends with one thing.

Although it had really nothing to do with the item itself, the volatile nature of finding black lace panties in your husband's coat pocket led to a sort of red fury that's only ever found you in times of extreme stress. It's a mind break; it's like stretching a thread as far as it can go only to watch it snap.

But it was mostly your folly; your mistake. You knew he was never willing to give it a real try. You knew that despite the fact that she tried to give you space, her feelings never would let her. And more mind breaking than the fury of finding out that he was fucking her all along (how many times? How many times did they lie entwined in some secret place?) is the fury of feeling stupid. There's a word for it when it's a man: cuckold. Funny how a cheated-on woman probably deserves it, while a cuckolded man is pitied and upheld as a martyr.

You're hardly a martyr. And you should have known, as you clench the panties in your hand and watch the black lace elastic criss-cross your white fingers, that he was never finished hurting you back. Some mistakes can never be forgiven. But you thought you'd married a forgiving man.

It's on you, too.

_Evening, evening on the ground_

_And there is no one else around_

_So you will blame me_

_Blame me for the rocks_

_And baby bones and broken lock_

_On the garden_

_Garden wall of Eden_

You get a little lost in watching the dryer spin; the waste of water (vindictively, you ran the load with just the offending garment in it – vindictively, you hoped it would fill the septic tank just a little sooner so that he would be as inconvenienced as you feel) rushing through your ears more loudly than you expected. You've been throwing up most of the morning and your face is wan and pale, but you tie up your hair and straighten your clothes and get ready for your shift, because that's just what you do. You push through it until you can't.

At the prom, his hands were clammy; there was no warmth in his smile. You'd spent hours picking out the red dress that silhouetted you brightly like a flame against all the funereal black; no one knew that it would be a night warranting a memorial at the time, but the difference, you felt, was that he maybe could appreciate you this time. Maybe once you'd see yourself reflected in his eyes the same way that she always is. You had the hope – it was like a new beginning, a chance to relive the prom again and erase the offending years in the awkwardness of high school.

But his eyes wouldn't meet yours; he stared over your shoulder and then left with her to supposedly check on a patient. Stupidly, the hope remained. Stupidly, you thought that he was actually telling the truth this time. It's not as if the sex was getting better, but he'd always loved you in red. Now, it seems he was colour-blind. That, or just obsessed with Meredith Grey.

Now, as you leave the trailer, closing the door carefully behind you because the latch is weak, you nod once, twice. The panties are in your purse. Your heart has leaked out somewhere, or frozen itself like the gnawing cold in your stomach, and there's just a sense of absolute and utter loss of control.

Lovers who kill each other? You sort of understand them now. It's easy to blame it on the black lace, but later you'll realize you should have blamed it on the constant cold; in your bones – in your ears, and in your husband's eyes.

_For the spider bites_

_And all your love as we were_

_We were born to fuck each other_

_One way or another_

_But I'll only lie_

_Down by the waterside at night_

Tacked on the board, they glare down at everyone, but you get a certain sense of satisfaction from the way people look out of their peripheral vision, as if the accusing sight is too hard to bear head-on. Meredith Grey never could hide her true feelings. Her face drained the moment she recognized the scalloped edging of the leg bands. She was smart enough not to meet your gaze at that moment; you were smart enough to just walk away.

Now, you stumble into an on-call room because the vomiting has really drained you and stop dead, because she's everywhere and you just want to be alone. Please. Just once, can you not be confronted with the reason for the pain of the last four months?

She immediately curls into herself; her legs shoot up to her chest and she bites her lower lip in a way that you remember from being a child and being in trouble with the nanny or with your mother. And you know – it's not her fault. None of this is her fault. But it's that blind fury again, that total loss of self-control, and you hurl your white coat to the floor, just to get satisfaction out of the way she flinches.

The words tumble out of your mouth in a tone you barely recognize. "Fuck off. You're everywhere, and you're always around, you're occupying my husband's attentions so that he forgets how to fuck me at night, and really? I need you to just fuck. Off."

She says nothing, but her eyes darken, and you mistake it for triumph. Yes, behold the cheating whore, finally broken over the knee of all of her mistakes. And just like that thread that's stretched to the limit, you snap. Suddenly, violently, and with frayed edges.

"Listen here, Grey. You've won, okay? You've won him, you've won his passion and his love and his attention. You've done it! I have no fucking idea how, but he's yours. So why don't you just get out of my way? Why don't you take your stringy hair, your hollow eyes, your twisted smile and your awkward gait, and just get the fuck out? Seriously, leave."

Now, her eyes flash. "You have no right to order me to leave. Or to speak to me in that way."

You flip back your hair, drawing yourself up to your full height, and surprisingly, this feels powerful. You feel like you could overpower this tiny woman; this practically-a-girl-still, with her defiant blue eyes and her thin arms. "I have every. Right. To speak to you in any way I wish. I am still an attending at this hospital. I am still your superior, and I am ordering you out. So get the fuck out, Grey."

She half-rises; she knows you have a point, and she isn't stupid enough to disobey a direct order from a superior. But she stops right in front of you, right on the way to the door, and stares you right in the eyes.

"You might be angry, Addison, and you have every right to be. But you do not have the right to treat me like shit because he chose me. You hurt him first. You hurt him first, and then you came back to fuck up his life again. Don't blame me because your marriage was failing even before he came out here."

"Oh, but I do blame you, Grey," you hiss, your face inches from hers. "I do blame you, because without you, we could have saved it."

"Did you want to save it?" she asks bluntly, and your hand flies up, stopping a mere inch from her soft cheek. She flinches, but she holds her ground, and suddenly, it's like you're suspended in time and space. The moment freezes.

Your hand connects with her face then, and the crack brings you both back to earth. Her cheek reddens, but she says nothing. You, however, are still behind your rage, and you can't help adding insult to injury.

"I don't know what the hell he sees in you."

And instead of hitting you back, as you deserve, she kisses you instead.

_Hey man, tiny baby tears_

_I will collect a million years_

_And you can blame me_

_Blame me, I will wear it_

_In the empty, hollow part of my garden_

_Garden wall of Eden_

It's not anything you want. You push her away, and she stumbles backwards, but you suddenly realize what he sees in her. That was a confident kiss; that was a kiss that knows how to burn lips and take control, and you realize she's more than a too-thin tired intern. She's a beautiful, vibrant woman in her own right, and you resent it like hell. It was ten times easier thinking of her as below you when she's really at your level and to Derek, even higher.

You push her again, watching her crumple onto the on-call room bed. She, however, pulls you down with her, and you both crash onto the bed; you graze your arm on the side of the post as you go down. You grab the rough fabric of her scrub top and push up, pulling it past her bra and not caring if it catches on the underwire and painfully pulls it across her sensitive nipple. Lowering your head to the exposed breast, you bite it, hard, and take pleasure in the sound of her gasp.

She pushes her hands down your scrub pants, but you refuse to let her go that far, and you buck your knee up to hit her outstretched arm. She gasps, but pushes harder, and you feel her nails scratch painfully down your abdomen. You suck her nipple harshly and then move out of her reach to push your hand roughly under her panties and across her clitoris.

At this point, it's beyond out of control. She leans forward to suck on your neck, and bites, hard, so that you scream a little. With that, she pushes you off her and flips quickly, so much more quickly than you expected her to be able to move. In a moment, she's pinning you to the bed, sitting squarely over your hips. The look on her face is unreadable; her eyes are so dark that you feel a frisson of fright.

Deliberately, she stares at you, then smacks you across the face with an open palm. The stinging, along with the fact that it's really Derek you want to punish and not Meredith, causes you to drop your hands which are fisted harshly over her shoulders, your nails digging into her back.

And in that moment, the rage flows away and your face crumples, your hands hiding your tears of shame.

Meredith slides off you; you lie horizontally across the bed, side by side, before you feel her arms sliding over your chest and her head resting on your shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Addison," is all she says, and you turn, bowing your head into her embrace and feeling her gentle kisses like feathers over your hair and cheeks and eyes, her thin fingers wiping tears from your cheeks and her incredible understanding of the utter hurt that you feel.

_And the clamour as they raise the curtain_

_You will, you will never make me learn_

_To lay beneath the mountain_

_Cause I'll only lie_

_Down by the waterside at night_

And then she tells you. "He hasn't chosen either of us. He's avoiding me and he won't look me in the eye. Because he knows that I'm really not what he wants right now, either."

"He doesn't know what he wants," you say, your voice foggy and full of a world of pain that's your own making and some of his, and Meredith recognizes, some of hers, too. Her arms tighten around you.

"No."

There's silence and then you move your hands over her back, down under her pants and over her smooth skin to rest on her abdomen, but she lets go of you to push your hands away.

"This never happened."

You open your mouth, but she lays a finger against it. "I know. But it didn't happen."

She gets up and stretches her arms above her head, and shoots you a smile as she grabs her coat and tightens the string on her pants.

The door closes; you close your eyes, and let your mind sink into the place where you don't have to think about the implications of this.

Back at the trailer, he refuses to look you in the eye, but you don't say anything either. You pack a suitcase quietly; he flips the pages of his magazine and watches you coil up the cord on your hair straightener.

Before you leave, you stand square and look him in the eye. "You were never done hurting me back. Now, you don't have to worry about it."

With that, you toss something on the floor in front of him and put a hand on the weak latch, not caring if the door doesn't slam properly behind you, because it's not your problem anymore.

You leave as he bends to pick up the only pair of black lace panties he ever gave you and hear the door bang against the metal jamb as you head through the rain for the security and warmth of your car.

You never wear black lace panties again.

_Blame me, I will wear it_

_In the empty, hollow part of my garden_

_Garden wall of Eden._


End file.
